The Vegan

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What to expect

Herschel Caine is a master of the universe. His hedge fund, built on the miracle of machine learning, is inches away from systematically sapping profits from the market. His SoHo offices (shoes optional, therapy required) are ready for desperate investors to flood through the doors. But on May 12, his mind is elsewhere-at his Cobble Hill townhouse and the dinner party designed to impress his flawless neighbours. When the soiree falters, Herschel concocts a prank that goes horrifically awry, plunging him into a tailspin of guilt and regret. As Herschel's perfect world starts to slip away, he clings to the moral clarity he finds in the last place he'd expect: a sudden connection with his neighbour's dog.

A wildly inventive, reality-bending trip, The Vegan holds a mirror up to its reader and poses a question only a hedge fund manager could: is purity a convertible asset? The more Herschel disavows his original sin, and the more it threatens to be revealed, the more it becomes something else entirely: a way into a forgotten world of animals, nature, and life beyond words.

Andrew Lipstein, the author of Last Resort, a novel that 'you'll think about . . . for weeks after you read the last pages' (Los Angeles Times), challenges our ideas of contemporary morality in his scintillating, provocative second novel.

Critics Review

  • Andrew Lipstein’s The Vegan is a meaty comedy with a bleeding heart, highly recommended for all animals who read

    Joshua Cohen, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  • In his engrossing new novel, Andrew Lipstein has produced a feverish, fantastically surprising parable about guilt, money, and (curveball) the lives of animals. It reads like the unholy offspring of Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day and Julio Cortázar’s cosmic short fiction, or Crime and Punishment for the Brooklyn brownstone set

    Andrew Martin, author of EARLY WORK AND COOL FOR AMERICA
  • A fresh, witty, masterfully crafted morality tale for the modern age. Lipstein has conceived an unforgettable character, terrifyingly real, who could have walked out of an episode of Succession. I absolutely (bordering on obsessively) loved this novel

    Virginia Feito, author of MISS MARCH
  • Andrew Lipstein’s hilarious, acid-tart, spot-on, and deeply unnerving novel The Vegan follows its privileged narrator as his inability to tolerate his own guilt and complicity deranges him. We can’t turn away as he follows his impulse, both righteous and ridiculous, to burn it all down. Lipstein has written a precise, weird, and wildly propulsive take on modern American ethical and moral bankruptcy

    Dana Spiotta, author of WAYWARD
  • A sharply observed literary novel with elements of satire and intrigue baked into the mix, The Vegan is a deftly told morality tale for our time

    Jonathan Tropper
  • A funny, intelligent page-turner, The Vegan explores what it means to have self-determination and to take it from another – or to have it taken from you. It unfolds in a delectably paranoid fever dream that possesses a Kafkaesque strangeness, humor, and moral terror. One of the most entertaining and beguiling novels I’ve read in years. Lipstein has quickly joined the ranks of my favorite contemporary novelists

    Cara Blue Adams, author of YOU NEVER GET IT BACK

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